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Never let it be said that Zionists can’t run an effective propaganda campaign. They’re at it again, giving all to stimulate fear with clever patterns of deception.

David Harris is spreading his fear-mongering widely. For European audiences, his propaganda is targeting Germany through Der Tagesspiegel and Italy through L‘Opinione.

His article on “Iran policy: what price failure” also spreads the message of fear through the Huffington Post to Americans.

To begin his fear stimulus, Harris writes, “Among today’s many foreign policy challenges, Iran’s nuclear programme may be the most daunting.” What better way to stoke fear than call the object of your attack “daunting”?

His next fear-prodding statement reads, “An Iran capable of producing – and delivering – nuclear weapons would have major global consequences.”

An American voice for Israel, Harris tries to drum up global fear of Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Harris knows full well that Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads and Iran has none.

Harris ignores the fact that Israel has been in attack-mode since its beginnings – ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, invasion and sponsorship of Sabre and Shatilla murders in Lebanon’s refugee camps, slaughter in Gaza, military theft of the Golan Heights from Syria.

On the other hand, Iran’s military history has involved only defence. Harris chooses to ignore this damning fact. Actually, Harris, Director of the American Jewish Committee, started pumping fear of Iran into the heads of his readers some time ago.

Carrying on, Harris claims: “Iran would wield enormous power in the most strategically vital and energy-rich part of the world. And its influence could extend far beyond, including in Latin America, where it has established close ties with Bolivia, Ecuador Nicaragua and Venezuela.”

To strike more fear in the hearts and minds of the Middle East, Harris adds, “Already, some neighbouring states may be exploring their own nuclear options.” It’s amazing how a major Zionist voice in America can churn up fear-producing packages.

“Would Iran share its nuclear and missile technology with others? Very likely. North Korea and Pakistan certainly did.” If you’re not afraid of what Iran might do on its own with nuclear power, just direct your fear to how it might share its nuclear secrets.

Trying to debunk the truth, Harris asks, “Does Iran only want civilian nuclear energy to prepare for a decline in its vast oil and gas reserves?” His response: “Nonsense.”

Then he plays with this: “Intelligence from a variety of countries confirms that Iran’s nuclear programme reflects a clear desire to achieve, at the very least, breakout capacity, allowing it to weaponize in short order.”

The countries aren’t named, but they certainly include Israel. From this line of fear mongering, there’s no way that Iran could be trusted with any nuclear development.

What better way to stoke fear than this claim of uncertainty: “We cannot be certain that the current Iranian regime will act rationally.” One might aver the same uncertainty about Israel, but that’s verboten.

One of the most telling statements by Harris is this: “…countries derive power from merely possessing nuclear weapons, regardless of their possible use.” That could easily refer to Israel, with its cache of nuclear weapons at Dimona.

Harris’s solution is typical of a fear-monger’s: destroy Iran economically, politically and militarily, but make the prescription sound pleasant while referring to a “UN-defying, human-rights-abusing, Holocaust-denying, vote-rigging president?”

Americans, bought and sold by Israeli lobbyists like Harris, will, of course, buy the propaganda and respond to their Harris-made fears.

It’s time to expose the post-9/11 model for fear mongering before propagandists like Harris use it to bring destruction to another country and its people.

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years.

December 27, 2009Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah gave a speech in Beirut’s southern suburb Dahiyeh on Sunday. “Today in Dahiyeh… we declare that the American scheme of hegemony threatens our nation, values, and the future of our peoples. We condemn its schemes and wars on our countries and peoples. We condemn its full partnership with Israel in those crimes. We also call upon the nation to be aware of the real nature of this enemy and this plot and not to be mislead by the fake slogans about freedom.”

Nasralah continued with warnings about collaboration with Zionism. “There are millions of Palestinian refugees living away from their homes and there are more than 11 thousand prisoners in Israeli jails…We call on the ummah not to confuse between the friend and the foe and not to listen to US and Israeli proxies who want to exchange this enemy with a brother. We call for ending the siege of Gaza. What kind of ummah is this, an ummah of 1.4 billion Muslims watching 1.5 million Palestinians living in harsh conditions due to the siege? A year ago, we told Egypt a word of truth and we were railed at. Today, in addition to the siege, there is the iron wall and the flow of water in tunnels to finish off the rest of the narrow veins that give some hope to Gaza. Today, I call on Egypt to stop building this wall and the break the siege. This should be condemned by all honest Arabs. Silence cannot continue at the expense of a whole people, regardless of the pretexts.”

Lebanon’s achievement in overcoming division was noted. “And what had been schemed for Lebanon was frightening in terms of wars, seditions, and divisions as well as a suspicious role for Lebanon in the new Middle East; the sectarian, ethnic, and conflicting Mideast that would yield to Israel. Today we have crossed this stage and we are entering a new one with fixing ties with Syria being one of its most important characteristics. Today we have a national unity government that comprises most of the powers and this gives us a chance to move forward to solve our country’s problems.”

The Hezbollah leader addressed the Christian community in Lebanon. “I call on them for a quiet dialogue away from ardent rhetoric; a dialogue among themselves over their present and future options. I call them to recall past experiences and conclude whether bargaining on Israel, by some parties, was good for Lebanon or was it the contrary. I call on them to review the bargaining of some on the American administration. Today, we have 150 thousand American soldiers in Iraq and they did not provide security for the Christians who can’t even gather in their churches to mark the birth of Christ. Can the United States provide security? I tell them that the interest of the Christian community in Lebanon lies in Lebanon, not anywhere else. It’s in their interest to cooperate with the rest of the Lebanese. Today the Lebanese have the chance to acknowledge one another; and this is a chance that must not be wasted.”

So much has appeared in the international press and on the Internet that it would seem to be an exercise in redundancy to offer a perspective on the tragedy that befell the people of Gaza last year, especially the Gazan children. A devastating and colossal tragedy it certainly was; the Israeli attacks by sea, air and land were more brutal than anything the inhabitants of Gaza had ever endured previously.

The pictures that flooded television screens around the world showed a gruesome parade of young corpses and wounded children being loaded into and unloaded from the trunks of private cars that transported them to the only hospital in Gaza worthy of being called a hospital. People of conscience all over the world found these images horrifyingly explicit and they brought home to us both the magnitude of the death and destruction unleashed by Israel’s brutal assault against helpless and innocent Gazan children who had nowhere to run or hide. This latest orgy of air strikes and armed incursions by Israeli military forces turned the besieged and starved Strip into an unbearable inferno – literally into the Killing Fields of Gaza.

In November 2000, the Globe and Mail published my article “Who are the victims here?” in which I described the living conditions of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip during my stay in the occupied territories in 1999:

“I recently observed the effects of the ‘peace process’ when I visited the children of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Gaza, Rafah and East Jerusalem. These children know first-hand the effects of military and economic oppression. There is hardly a family that has not experienced torture, imprisonment or economic hardship.

“Most of these children live in refugee camps in houses with corrugated roofs and cramped living spaces. Often, they do not have running water. The children lack adequate schools, health-care facilities, hospitals, social services, public parks, swimming pools, or recreation facilities. In the camps, the streets are their playgrounds, often with open sewers and waste flowing freely. They have seen no other reality.”

It is sad that what seems so obvious to the rest of the world escapes the minds of apologists for Israeli state terror.

Children make up more than half of crowded Gaza’s 1.4 million people and are the most defenseless victims of Israeli siege of Gaza. Israel’s harsh security measures come at an enormous humanitarian cost and the stark reality is that under Israeli occupation, entire generations of Palestinian children and youth have suffered a litany of horrific, traumatizing events for thirty years. In addition to almost-daily home demolitions, they have witnessed intimidation, humiliation, fear, insecurity, poverty, closures, and the menacing presence of armed settlers.

With all their healthy socializing structures destroyed by the Israeli military, these children have never known peace or security, or the freedom to roam the streets and playgrounds. Gaza’s children, like their parents, continuously face hardship in simply going about their lives; they are prevented from living in peace and security, going to school, or doing things that make up the daily fabric of most people’s existence. Their parents have not known peace and freedom either, and cannot even dream about a safe and productive future for their children, and the children to come after them.

Ever since the moribund Oslo peace accord, they have been living in large prison camps. Now, locked up and besieged in Gaza by an Israeli army that happens to be one of the most powerful in the world, these children are under attack in their own land, in their own homes, and are being subjected to economic, psychological, physical and emotional terror from the air, sea and ground. Indeed all of Gaza has become a danger zone where children’s homes have been demolished, bombed, and shelled, killing children inside. Other children have been killed while riding in cars with their parents, while playing in the streets, while walking to school, visiting friends, and even while taking refuge in a UN Shelter.

Imagine the psychological and emotional terror experienced by children who grow up knowing that their parents cannot protect them from helicopter gunships, ground missiles, or snipers’ bullets. These children have no escape routes, no options, because the Israeli army and invading settlers are the ones who determine which child, which family, will be shot; which houses and trees will be bulldozed and uprooted; which street or alleyway will be hit by the sharpshooters. Their basic human rights are being trampled on by deliberate policies of the Israeli government whose obscene actions have denied these innocent children education, safety, health, economic well-being and all the amenities of normal life.

This nightmare of the children of Gaza is best described in the pages of Franz Kafka:

Lawrence Davidson in Counter Punch writes that, “In Kafka’s world, the prevailing theme is uncertainty and unpredictability. There are no set rules for behavior and the orders given by authorities seem arbitrary and even contradictory. You do not know what the laws are. The ‘authorities’ in Kafka’s work sit in their fortresses and periodically intrude upon the lives of the confused and apparently helpless protagonists.”

Similarly, nothing is predictable for Palestinians. Israel’s rules can change from one day to the next without notice or explanation. They live in an arbitrary environment, continuously adapting to circumstances they cannot influence and which increasingly reduce the range of their possibilities. No one really knows how many Palestinian children will continue to re- experience the horrors of conflict psychologically and emotionally throughout their lives.

Yet, as the world witnessed the organized, ruthless killing and maiming of these Palestinian children, there was only deafening silence from our “humane” Canadian government. If Prime Minister Harper so greatly respects the dignity of human life as he stated during his recent visit to China he would have asked Israel long ago to cease its murderous onslaught on the children of Gaza.

During my stay in the occupied territories, I was often asked by Palestinians why the world ignored their sufferings and their right to self-determination. I had no answer then. But today I can tell them that they are not alone; the world is outraged at what it witnessed in Gaza and for the “first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, an international campaign calling for sanctions against Israel for its innumerable violations of International Law has been very successful in drawing huge public attention and initiating a great number of mobilizations and initiatives around the world.” (Michel Warschawski)

No amount of “anti-Semitic” or “self-hating” labels pasted on people of conscience who criticize the Israeli occupation can stifle that debate; it is a debate now spreading throughout the world, focusing unavoidable scrutiny on Israel and its brutal occupation of Palestinian territories.

When the dust settles, history will record that the atrocities repeatedly committed by Israel against defenseless Palestinian children in Gaza was a turning-point in the long ordeal of Palestine’s occupation. Things can never be the same again in Palestine because the world knows more of the truth about Israel’s’ cruel agenda than ever before.

(Mrs. Wahida Valiante is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. She is a retired professional family counselor who visited Palestine as part of a fact-finding medical team. While there, the team visited refugee camps, health care clinics, hospitals, orphanages, children’s schools, local and international charities and women’s refugee centers, as well as speaking extensively with social workers and local Palestinian families.)

Preliminary reports say that at least three people have been killed and five others injured as an explosion hits the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, where the Shia Hezbollah movement has its headquarters.

The explosion occurred as Hezbollah was organizing a mourning ceremony to commemorate the martyrdom anniversary of the third holiest figure of Shia Islam, Imam Hussein.

Those killed in the blast were the members of the security services. They were reportedly trying to defuse an explosive device planted in a car belonging to a high-ranking Hamas official based in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s security forces have cordoned off the entire area, and the Lebanese army has been deployed to the scene, a Press TV correspondent reported.

The incident came after Hezbollah Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah delivered a televised speech on the eve of Ashura, calling on Lebanon’s Shias to take part massively in Sunday’s ceremony which will include a huge march across the southern suburbs.

Rocked since 2005 by assassinations and an Israeli attack, Lebanon has enjoyed greater stability recently and formed a unity government last month.

London – Ma’an – Egyptian security forces detained 38 participants of the Gaza Freedom March from a hotel in Al-Arish on Sunday at noon, according to a statement issued by the event’s organizers.

“Egyptian security forces detained a group of 30 internationals in their hotel in el-Arish and another group of 8 at the bus station. They also broke up a memorial action commemorating the Cast Lead massacre at the Kasr al Nil Bridge,” the statement asserted.

The Freedom March plans to bring more than 1,000 international protesters to Gaza this week to denounce the blockade of the Palestinian territory.

The detainees include Spanish, French, British, American and Japanese nationals. Another group of eight people, including citizens of American, British, Spanish, Japanese and Greece, were detained at Al-Arish bus station in the afternoon of December 27, the organizers said.

“The Egyptian security forces eventually yielded, letting most of the marchers leave the hotel, but did not permit them to leave the town. When two younger delegates, a French and Japanese woman, attempted to leave Al-Arish, the Egyptian authorities stopped their taxi and unloaded their luggage,” it stated.

Meanwhile, in Cairo, Egyptian security police broke up a commemoration ceremony marking the anniversary of the Israeli invasion of Gaza organized by the Gaza Freedom March at the Kasr An-Nil Bridge.

“As a nonviolent way of commemorating the more than 1,300 Palestinians killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza that began a year ago on December 27, 2008, Gaza Freedom Marchers tied hundreds of strings with notes, poems, art and the names of those killed to the bridge,” the group said.

“We’re saddened that the Egyptian authorities have blocked our participants’ freedom of movement and interfered with a peaceful commemoration of the dead,” said Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, one of the March’s organizers.

Benjamin added that the Gaza Freedom March participants are continuing to urge the Egyptian government to allow them to proceed to Gaza.

They visited the Arab League asking for support, various foreign embassies and the Presidential Palace to deliver an appeal to President Mubarak. They are calling their supporters around the world to contact Egyptian embassies and urge them to free the marchers and allow them to proceed to Gaza, the statement concluded.

From the Archives

By ROBIN BLACKBURN | CounterPunch | April 18, 2011

… It is easy for Northerners to see the bad faith in Southern denials that the glorious cause was no more than a wretched defense of racial bondage. The most insistent secessionists were indeed the large slave-owners, and the Confederacy’s very belated recourse to the freeing of some slaves to form a Confederate regiment cannot alter the fact that the rebellion was animated by the desire to insulate slavery from the peril of a Republican president and the persisting contempt of so many Northerners. Slavery was a delicate institution that could not be subjected to the rough and tumble of party politics.

But if Northerners can spot the beam in the eyes of the Southerners they don’t notice the mote in their own. This is the more difficult to do because it requires simultaneous attention to two considerations. Firstly, in April 1861, and for many months thereafter, slavery remained entirely lawful in the Union. Secondly, so long as both sides remained attached to slavery, the Union case against secession would remain flawed at best. … Read Full article

Aletho News Original Content

By Aletho News | January 9, 2012

This article will examine some of the connections between the US and UK National Security apparatus and the appearance of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory beginning after the accident at Three Mile Island. … continue

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